Spirit of the world

Tues­day. [Heb. 4:1–13; Luke 21:12–19] And ye shall be hat­ed of all men for My name’s sake. He who breathes even a lit­tle of the spir­it of the world in­to him­self be­comes cold to Chris­tian­i­ty and its de­mands. This in­dif­fer­ence turns in­to dis­like when one re­mains in it a long time with­out com­ing to one’s sens­es, and es­pe­cial­ly af­ter pick­ing up some­where a par­ti­cle of some false teach­ing. The spir­it of the world with its false teach­ings is a spir­it of dis­lik­ing Christ: it is of the an­ti­christ. It is the spread of hos­tile at­ti­tudes to­ward the Chris­tian con­fes­sion and Chris­tian tra­di­tions. Ap­par­ent­ly some­thing like this is hap­pen­ing a­round us. So far on­ly hol­low roars are sound­ing ev­ery­where; but it will not be sur­pris­ing if soon the Lord’s proph­e­sy will be­gin, that, they shall lay their hands on you… and per­se­cute you… ye shall be be­tray­ed… and cause you to be put to death. The spir­it of an­ti­christ is al­ways the same; what was in the be­gin­ning will be now, per­haps in an­oth­er form, but with the same mean­ing. What should we do? In your pa­tience pos­sess ye your souls. Be pa­tient, with a firm word of con­fes­sion of the truth in your mouth and in your heart.